Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 2931 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
Okay, I will leave it at that. I think that my other questions are for the NAO.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
You mentioned only two issues in connection with behavioural change, one of which is providing misleading addresses. However, what about simple behavioural changes that people can make to their lifestyles and the way that they invest, or any other changes that are necessary to reduce their tax burden—I assume legally? Are there indications about that kind of behavioural change, and how quickly would we pick those up?
09:45
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
Would you not consider it part of the audit function to comment on the adequacy or otherwise of the limit?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
The limit is quite important. In effect, at the end of the year, we are balancing our books on that basis. I would have thought that there would be a comment in the audit report about how the limit was functioning, whether it was functioning well, whether it was adequate and whether it appeared to be doing its job.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
If you recall, Auditor General, the committee has, in the past, challenged some of the adjustments and estimates, and has looked at the impact and the overall figure in the aggregate. We had a useful private briefing with HMRC last year, which was really helpful in giving us some background. I notice that, this time, HMRC has greatly reduced its references to adjustments and estimates. It no longer details them, but instead provides an overview. The NAO report details some of the estimates and adjustments, but by no means at the same level as before. Do you have any more detail on how those estimates are audited? Who looks at them and checks the logic in them? On what basis is there an assurance that the estimates are accurate?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
My first line of questioning is more for the NAO. Over the past few years, as the Scottish rates of income tax and the Scottish tax system have moved a bit away from the UK rates and system, there has been concern about taxpayers’ behavioural responses. The most up-to-date information that I have is that there is no clear data to indicate that there have been any behavioural changes in response to those moves. Are you aware of any plans for HMRC to update its research on taxpayers’ behavioural responses to income tax divergence? It was previously indicated that such research could become an annual study, which would arguably be more relevant today, given the increased policy divergence on income tax.
I think that you might be on mute.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
I presume that that applies across the UK. It is a strong indication as to where tax revenues are heading.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
In HMRC’s outturn figures and the Scottish budget, the amount that is estimated for income tax and so on is based on forecast revenues by the SFC and the Office for Budget Responsibility. HMRC reports on the reconciliation and the actual figure three years later, which can be a plus or a minus. The reconciliation that has been applied to 2026-27 is plus £406 million, because tax receipts were higher than forecast.
The Scottish Government can borrow only a limited amount to smooth out the effects of possible forecast errors in income tax receipts. The amount that the Government can borrow is roughly £600 million, which rises with inflation every year. That could be seen as an arbitrary figure; I am not at all sure how it was reached. What is it based on? Given that income tax receipts are rising faster than inflation, is the limit still fit for purpose? I am not sure whether the Auditor General or witnesses from the NAO should answer that one.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2024-25”
Meeting date: 28 January 2026
Colin Beattie
I will move on to—
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Delayed discharges: A symptom of the challenges facing health and social care” and “Community health and social care: Performance 2025”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Colin Beattie
With regard to some of the major issues that have been highlighted in the report, how are integration authorities facing and tackling, say, “workforce shortages” or “limited resources”, which I presume would be money?
